The safety for babies and small children (children) within vehicles has been the center of various debates for auto manufactures, consumer and government safety groups, along with respective parents or guardians. At the heart of these debates is the prime directive of providing the safest possible environment for children while be transported or inside motor vehicles.
The US Department of Transportations issued new regulations for such on Sep. 18, 2006, which require children under three years of age to use a child restraint and that drivers are legally responsible for making sure that children under 14 years use seat belts. Supplementing federal standards, all states have codified variations for safety belt enforcement (primary/secondary), fines for such, child restraint requirements, fines for such, ages for such, exempted vehicles and other.
It should be noted that to meet these requirements, many child seat products have been developed and that child seat technology has drastically improved over the last few decades. One significant innovation and government requiring the use of the Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children (LATCH) system. Assisting in a different way, another important program, WHALE, “We have a little emergency—Child Safety Seat Occupant Identification Program’” assists drivers with child care after an accident has occurred.
However, with such and a host of other advances, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has recently launched (Mar. 2, 2009) a Statement of Review of Federal Standards for Child Safety Seats and has stated, “though current standards are exceedingly thorough, the agency is always looking at ways to make highway travel even safer for children.”
The number one reason according to NHTSA is that “every year, thousands of young children are killed or injured in crashes, mainly because 3 out of every 4 children in child safety seats are not properly secured, or even worse, not restrained at all.”
Aside from direct child seat safety technology and related advances, hindering the attention to children in vehicles is the other societal advances in technology within and not part of the vehicle with regards to navigation (GPS), communication (hands free, cell phones, PDA's), entertainment (TV's, I-pods, Games, radio, internet), and other factors such as marketing along our nations highways and roads and general population increases which impede the focus of respective drivers. Accordingly, the monitoring of Children within a vehicle has gone from a prime parental concern to a part of larger social order harboring so many distractions which has lead to either serious injury and deaths of children through driver mistake and negligence. Quoting the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Never leave your child alone in or around cars. Any of the following can happen when a child is left alone in or around a vehicle: Temperatures can reach deadly levels' in minutes, and the child can die of heat stroke. They can be strangled by power windows, sunroofs, or accessories. They can knock the vehicle into gear, setting it into motion or be backed over when the vehicle backs up.”
Pursuant to such, there is a clear need for the Child Seat Safety System, which continues the societal development of ways to improve the safety of our children. Currently, there is no real time monitoring system for the connectivity and environment monitoring surrounding children in child seats. Continuing there is no automated notification to the driver or the vehicle owner of issues with connectively or rises in temperature. Lastly, in the case when the driver is not available (left child in car) or is incapacitated from a an accident, existing technologies do not initiate an alarm sequence to notify either near-by third parties, identification of a child in car for emergency personnel, or notification to the driver and others indicating a dangerous situation. We believe the CSSS addresses such issues and should be considered for use on all vehicles equipped to install child seats.